{
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  "path": "/blog/updating-generator-lionbyte",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-20T02:31:51.348Z",
  "site": "https://www.lion-byte.com",
  "tags": [
    "generator-lionbyte",
    "v0.4.0",
    "v1.0.1",
    "Compare changes from v0.4.0 to v1.0.1",
    "one by Matt Rozema",
    "node.green",
    "available all the way back to Node v7.10.1",
    "Don't Transpile JavaScript for Node.js",
    "configuration files that I defined here",
    "@latest",
    "@next."
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  "textContent": "On March 9, 2018, I updated my package generator-lionbyte to v1.0.1!\n\nToday, I want to share all the changes I made and my thoughts as I was working on it.\n\nIf you want to follow along or review the changes at your leisure, here are links to the version tags:\n\n  * v0.4.0\n  * v1.0.1\n\n\n\nYou can check the diffs on this page:\n\n  * Compare changes from v0.4.0 to v1.0.1\n\n\n\n## Why I Decided to Update\n\nI was using VS Code's debugger for Java for homework in my network communications class, and I thought it was a pretty great tool. I wanted to do a better job of debugging my JavaScript projects and rely less on console.log().\n\nI did a quick search for any how-to articles and found one by Matt Rozema. Essentially, there were 3 options: debug the transpiled version, installing another package for debugging, or setting the IDE's configuration to use `babel-node`. All of these options seemed tedious to me, and I wanted to avoid it if I could.\n\nThen I thought, \"Maybe I don't need to use babel-node?\" The feature I absolutely wanted to keep was async/await; they make it easier to work with Promises. According to node.green, that particular ES2017 feature is available all the way back to Node v7.10.1! I use the latest available Node version on my personal machines, so I'm content.\n\nAs I was looking through the page, I saw that ES6 import/export was not natively supported. I read Vance Lucas's article Don't Transpile JavaScript for Node.js  afterward. He basically reaffirmed that I came to the right conclusions. He mentioned that `babel` converts import/export down to require() and module.exports. It's still useful for client-side code, since `webpack` can parse and transpile it.\n\nThus, I decided to start updating my package.\n\n## Prettier\n\nAlthough `prettier` doesn't necessarily affect the functionality, this basically helped save me from my past self. The last time I really worked on this project was around mid-December, so I should make everything easier to read and resume. I saw that `prettier` paired well with `standard`.\n\n## Removing babel-node Usage\n\nThis was tedious, but not difficult. I re-wrote the modules to use require and module.exports as needed.\n\nThen I saw that the build scripts I wrote using `gulp` would be useless for Node.js specific projects. It was using `gulp-babel` to transpile the code, but I don't intend to write any code to be used for Node versions < 8.\n\nTherefore, I decided that I don't need gulp anymore.\n\n## Removing gulp Usage\n\nThere were a lot of tasks, and I was using `gulp-hub` to let the tasks be split into separate files. The problem was, that took a long time to load all the separate files before running a single task.\n\nThe task files were distributed among the subgenerators. The server and default project types no longer needed them, so that was easy. In a way, it was pretty satisfying to delete all those files.\n\nWhen I went to the static-site project type, I saw that it was heavily relying on gulp. It was... not the best, to say the least. I'm starting to realize that I was using way too much RAM during development with that configuration.\n\n## Using webpack@4 (Legato)\n\nSince I was removing all gulp tasks, I thought it would be better to fully utilize `webpack`. Although it recently updated to v4, codenamed \"Legato,\" it's a good chance for me upgrade my other projects using v3.\n\nI previously only used webpack to package the JavaScript portion of a project. Now I'm letting it build and bundle everything. Most plugins have already updated to support this version, but some have to be installed with either @latest or @next. As of March 11, 2018, it is the following:\n\n  * extract-text-webpack-plugin@next\n  * html-webpack-plugin@latest\n\n\n\nYou can look at the webpack configuration files that I defined here.\n\n## Lessons Learned\n\n  * Node.js versions > 8 already support all JavaScript features I want and _more_\n  * `prettier` and `standard` code formatters are a nice pair\n  * `gulp` is still pretty good, but has better use cases for it\n  * `webpack` does so much for web development\n\n",
  "title": "Updating generator-lionbyte",
  "updatedAt": "2018-03-11T00:00:00.000Z"
}